The THRIVE Approach

1. The THRIVE Approach Marion Aslan www.crazydiamond.org.uk

2. Time Healing Resilience Interdependence Vivacity Emancipation

3. THRIVE • Self help / guided approach to recovery • Supplements current models of working • Meets best practice criteria • Appropriate to all levels and areas of distress

4. The concept of THRIVE is one of taking the key elements of restoration and recovery and using them as the foundation stones for finding and achieving the future you want to build.

5. If recovery is a journey, a process, a direction rather than an event or a label then there has to be a map, a guide, short cuts, beginnings and an overall direction.

6. Advantages of the THRIVE Approach • Teaches short cuts • Draws on people’s innate strengths and abilities • Enables people to find order in a disordered world! • Sees madness as a natural coping strategy that need not be permanent • Places individual at the heart of the recovery process

7. Thriving Event Resilience (recovery) Survival with impairment Succumbing POTENTIAL RESPONSES TO DISTRESS Level of Functioning Time

8. The role of self in recovery-what helps?

9. Elements that underpin recovery • Hope & hopefulness • Ownership • Self • Activity • Personal • Choice THRIVE encompasses these within Time Healing Resilience Interdependence Vivacity Emancipation

10. Recovery may take you back to where you were, but to thrive means so much more. It enables you to regain and reclaim life not just as it was, but as it would and should have been had the disruption not occurred. It is a far more optimistic and hopeful concept. Marion Aslan

11. Recovery and Thriving Where the similarities lie are in the initial process of becoming unstuck, the underpinning elements that support moving on and the commitment required from self to put in the work and effort necessary for advancement. Marion Aslan

12. “We all have that essential human resilience within us, not to give in. We all have that capacity to grow stronger through adversity” Courtney Harding, U.S.A. Hope and optimism is crucial to the process and even this can be learned! The THRIVE approach firmly believes that the individual is the expert of his or her experiences, and within every person lies the necessary resources to facilitate reclamation of their life.

13. In order to thrive, there is a clear process of Breakdown, Breakthrough and Breakout (Aslan & Smith 2008) which embraces recovery but goes even further. It liberates the individual, emancipates and encourages responsibility taking. It can be actively supported by friends, family, workers and colleagues, but the key person is you, your hopes and desires and a commitment to reclaiming your life, working through problem areas and gaining insight into yourself.

14. Experience in a social context Explore your experiences Reconnecting Startling/ inc. toxic factors Engage with others get information Reclaim power & ownership Overwhelming Understand and make sense Change relationship with experience Get safe Make choices begin to recognise power/politics Emancipate self Get stuck! struggling Begin to engage with experience Reject labels/ Confront power Mourning loss & healing Identifying your experiences, Name the problem THRIVE ! Get safe again Get stuck! maintained

15. Time TIME is a natural healer as long as we don’t resist the process and become stuck. Think of someone you have loved who has died. The pain of grief becomes less raw over time – you don’t forget or stop missing the person, but over time you focus on the joy of knowing them rather than the pain of losing them. So it can be with emotional problems. With TIME you will feel differently, gain a different perspective and move away from the distress you feel right now.

16. Timelines Negative events Do you see any patterns in your timeline? Can you identify where your didtress began, or when it became problematic? Does that follow any event or events in particular? Past Positive events Present

17. Healing Healing is integral to recovery and essential to everyone’s wellbeing, sometimes easier to impart to others than to give to ourselves. There may be reasons why we block our own healing – guilt, worthlessness, shame, lack of belief in our own worth. .

18. Part of the healing process is to acknowledge these emotions, and allow healing elements into our consciousness.

19. Resilience Showing Resilience is a common factor in those who have survived and rebuilt their lives. Indeed we all have a degree of resilience, and some people are able to draw on their inner reserves and show Resilience even where the system may squash it. It is also possible to build up our own resilience and to help support the process in others.

20. Resilience encompasses the psychological damage AND enduring strength that can result from struggling with hardship

21. “We can call this natural healing process resilience. It is integral to and underpins recovery. It’s a process of taking back control of your life and reinventing yourself” Courtney Harding, U.S.A.

22. “We all have that essential human resilience within us, not to give in. We all have that capacity to grow stronger through adversity” Courtney Harding, U.S.A.

23. Interdependence We all rely on other people for some things some of the time, and other people may rely on us. These are the natural supports we can build on.

24. Interdependence A healthier attitude is to look at ways of increasing Our personal connections and relationships, building Circles of Support

25. Vivacity Vivacity is not a term we hear very often in mental health spheres but our conviction is that we should be thinking about this as a vital part of recovery. Being animated, full of enjoyment of life is possible for all. Many people who have experienced severe lows in their lives talk about enjoying life even more after coming through illness or depression.

26. Emancipation Emancipation or liberation comes with taking control of one’s own life and celebrating your own individuality and uniqueness. Playing a vital role in society and being valued can enhance our sense of freedom and remove us from the constraints of being regarded as mentally unwell, maintained in the system and feeling as if life happens to other people.

27. “This book fills a gap, where psychiatry more and more fails to see that mental health problems are a reaction to problems in life and not only, if at all, symptoms of an illness. The THRIVE Approach focuses on the person’s own potential and their capabilities to find solutions for their problems. Using this process, it is about framing your understanding of your experiences” Marius Romme, Professor Emeritus of Social Psychiatry, Maastricht Author of “Understanding Voices & “Accepting Voices”

28. The approach encourages the individual to • Learn self therapy • Find ways of increasing resilience • reframe their experience and either “let go” or “work through” • Find a future • Find restored hope

29. The approach encourages the supporter to • Act as a “reflector” • Take a more active listening role • Learn the language of distress • Understand metaphor & meaning • Retain hopefulness • Be a companion or guide on the journey Enables workers to reclaim their helping roles

30. Feedback from participants on THRIVE course • Challenged some of my ideas – e.g. the behaviour and lifestyles of some people who might seem “risky” or “abnormal” are strategies of survival • This course helped me put aside my background and training, allowing learning from others and to look at who is the expert • Gave me confidence to work with clients in a person centred way

31. The THRIVE Assessment & Planning Tool • The planning tool is for individuals who are currently receiving services or support. • It will assist recovery by helping to organise and plan all relevant support needs in a way that is useful to the individual, their workers and families, giving an overall direction of where the person wishes to be in their life • Ownership belongs to the individual - they assume responsibility in determining their care plan • Risk and safety issues negotiated

32. The THRIVE Approach… • Focuses on the values of working with individuals in a person centred, hopeful way towards recovery. • It sometimes challenges traditional thinking and concepts of mental illness, focusing rather on working with the individual, their story, their hopes, their dreams, skills and strengths rather than symptoms

33. Potential Outcomes of the THRIVE approach • People regard themselves differently – “survivors” , “victors” • Self knowledge • Self acceptance • Self determination • Self worth • Pride – “I am who I am”

34. Outcomes for workers • Renewed enthusiasm – the job you originally set out to do! • Pride in new skills – a huge variety • Optimism and fulfilment – seeing people reclaim their lives • Self worth arising from self knowledge

35. I wanted to let you know, at a difficult time personally and professionally, I found it uplifting, positive, clear, simple, not patronising, encouraging me in the way that I work, inclusive, varied, funny and very real. I have passed on details to the coordinator for mental health promotion, to the rest of my team and to some folk involved in recovery stories down here. Thank you both for all the hard work putting it together and for the inspiration! All the very best with the project Frances, Community Psychiatric Nurse, C.M.H.T. Cornwall

36. Sometimes its just a different perspective that is needed. If you don’t believe us, look sideways